Never trust Vala's cooking
by albert12
Summary: Oneshot. Vala attempts to make no-bake cookies- with disastrous results. Set sometime in season nine.


Author's Note: This one has been sitting around my hard drive for a while, waiting for someone to finish. My brother, the epic-ly annoying Dunrana, was responsible for coming up with the idea and most of the preliminary writing, but he handed it off to me for the finishing touches.

I hope everyone enjoys reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

* * *

Vala Mal Doran had just come across the most interesting tidbit of earth-lore. It had been Dr. Lam who had mentioned an old phrase "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach".

Vala had made a casual comment, and the Doctor had informed her on no uncertain terms that she was not talking about stabbing people.

So, she thought. These earth humans were susceptible to good cooking. Vala would just have to show Daniel what good of a cook she was!

First things first– she needed some advice on making earth food. After all, she was pretty certain that Daniel wouldn't be that fond of the foods of her native world- something about too many hot peppers.

Finally, Dr. Lam had enough of her pestering and threw her out of the infirmary.

* * *

Undaunted, she found Walter and pestered him until he handed her something called a "cookbook". Apparently, it was a book of recipes and instructions on how to prepare earth-food. Browsing through it, she calculated her next step.

Now she needed something to cook with. Cameron had a hot-plate in his quarters, she knew from an excessive amount of exploring (which other people tended to call snooping). And Vala had already figured out how to bypass the new base locks.

She walked in, seized a hold of it, and stopped short. It was connected to the wall by a cord. Had they already become that suspicious of her? She gave it a sharp pull and it came free, causing her to lose her balance and topple.

Bad luck insured she collided with his bedside lamp

Worse luck brought Cam in the door at that second.

She gave him the trademark Vala smile, and said "Can I borrow this? I'll bring it right back!"

Cam looked suspicious for a minute, but finally said "Alright, Just don't make any explosions."

* * *

Safely in Daniel's quarters, she dumped the hot-plate down on his desk. She turned to her new cookbook. Now for a recipe. Daniel had mentioned something called a "No-Bake Cookie", so she flipped through till she found a recipe.

_Melt two squares of baker's chocolate in a double boiler_ said the recipe. What on earth was a double boiler? She flipped through the book till she found it "_a pan filled with water on which another pan sits-in order to prevent food from burning_" she recited to herself.

She looked around Daniel's quarters for a saucepan – finally she found something like a pan, and a large bowl. She was filling the bowl with water from the bathroom sink when Cam walked in again with a small stack of pans.

"You forgot these. " he said, dropping them on the desk.

"I already found something." she stated

"I wouldn't do that!" he half-yelled, rushing over to grab the bowl away from the startled alien.

"And why not? It isn't exactly my fault that Daniel doesn't have any decent crockery around here."

"Because that bowl was made during the roman empire. It's one of his artifacts."

"Oh."

Now that she had the double boiler assembled (after a small incident that had soaked most of the carpet). She turned the switch on.

Fifteen minutes later, nothing was happening. Then she noticed the cord hanging down. She looked at it, and then spotted a plug that seemed to match it beside the desk. She reached over and plugged it in. Of course, not being from earth, she did not know that you should not have your finger between the prongs of an electric plug when plugging it in. She leapt back, saying something rather rude in Goa'ould, as every light in the room went out.

Minutes later Sergeant Siler dropped in to inform her that she had committed some sort of a horible sin called "Blowing a Fuse". He ranted at her for almost five miniutes about AC curcuts, power closets, and other strange parts of Tau'ri technology.

But once the lights came back on, the burner of the hot-plate turned red and a little light next to the dial lit up.

Now she turned back to the recipe it called for two cups of rolled oats. She paused to think and ran off to the cafeteria.

Minutes later she returned with two chocolate bars from the vending machine , two cups of oats and a rolling pin. It proved to take a lot of effort to make these Rolled Oats. She was so busy hoping Daniel appreciated the effort that he failed to notice that her double boiler beginning to boil over.

She finally noticed when there was a ripping sound and something fell on her. After a moment of kicking the thing, she realized it was a long strip of heavy paper that seemed to have fallen from the ceiling. She picked it up and threw it on Daniel's bed. What strange customs these Earth people had- gluing paper on the roof!

Had she not been occupied, she would have realized that a few pieces of the same paper had become included with the melted chocolate.

She finally got the oats rolled, then looked up the next ingredient. _1 ½ cups __Sugar_ "What on earth that?" she asked aloud. She decided it was time to ask for help.

Walking to the intercom, she called the control room.

"Walter speaking." a voice announced.

"What's sugar? I was looking in this stupid book but I can't seem to find it."

"It's a white powder- sort of like sand, and it tastes sweet." Walter stated.

"Thanks."

Vala rummaged through Daniel's cabinets till she found a canister of stuff that seemed to match the description. She poured some out in her hand and tasted it. She wouldn't have described it as sweet, but then again there were many other strange things on the Tau'ri home-world that didn't make sense.

She poured out two and a half cups and dumped it in the pan then she noticed that that the noticed that the container read _SALT_.

O, well, they sounded somewhat similar; they must be nearly the same thing – right?

* * *

Daniel knew when he approached his room that something was wrong. First, Cam had passed him in the hallway and asked "What do you want me to say at your funeral?" Second, a horrendous smell was pervading the corridor, third –he hadn't seen Vala in over an hour and a half.

He opened the door to his quarters- to find himself face-to-face with Vala. She was carrying a tray of what looked suspiciously like no-bake cookies.

Normally, a dozen alarms would have gone off in his head. However, these were no-bake cookies, and he had an extreme fondness for no-bake cookies.

"Mind?" he asked, reaching for one.

"I made them expecally for you … oh dear."

In the intervening time, Daniel had scooped up a cookie and eaten the entire thing in one bite. His face had then turned spectacularly green, and he had fallen over with a loud "clunk!"

With the vague feeling of disaster, she set the cookies down and turned to the intercom.

* * *

Two hours later, Doctor Caroline Lam had quietly cornered her and informed her that the old saying was "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach" not "...through having his stomach pumped."

* * *

Author's Note: Well? What did you think of it? Review and let me know!


End file.
